If you have ever wondered what it’s like to have your finger on a nuclear missile button, Tom Whitney can tell you.
We’ll let him get to that in a moment, but first some background on why his story is worth telling.
It’s because Whitney is a 34-year-old PGA Tour rookie, and he’s making his first start as a tour member this week at the American Express in Palm Desert, California, not far from where he attended La Quinta High School, scuffling for tee times at the fancy clubs sprinkled through the Coachella Valley.
His golf story isn’t that different from others. He was a good player early, good enough to follow his brother Bob to the Air Force Academy where Tom won four individual titles and convinced himself that he had the talent to play on a bigger platform.
But Whitney felt the tug of “being part of something bigger than myself and a calling, if you will, of just being part of that greater mission.”
That meant delaying, not denying, his intention to chase a career in professional golf.
And that’s how Whitney found himself spending hours underground in missile silos dug near Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Whitney and a partner were in charge of 10 nuclear missiles, working 24-hour shifts at underground sites away from F.E. Warren Air Force Base where they lived. He did that more than 200 times. Here’s where it starts to sound like a Tom Clancy novel.
“Everything's spread out among Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska. So, it's a good-sized field, or we call it the missile field. It's about, the entire complex is about the size of Rhode Island. If you think about it, there's 150 missiles, 15 personnel sites, and the base, and everything is hard-wired underground,” Whitney said.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT GGP+